Saturday, 29 September 2012

It's a 3.5 hour information-packed workshop ideal for those who have yet to begin a blog or for those who want to improve on what they have started.

The workshop will give you the chance to develop your blog idea, learn the tools to set it up, keep it interesting, promote it, and gain a readership. I will share with you all the do's and don't I've learnt over the last 4 years of blogging.

Below is a rough guideline of what we'll cover:Introduction to Blogging

Online vs Offline

Inspiration - Analysis of Material

The Blog Post - do's & don'ts

The Big Idea – Group discussion; exercises to develop your idea

Set it up – Blog platform, layout, design, style...

Content – multimedia, changing content, linking, widgets

Building an Audience – tools for marketing your blog

Social Networking – Facebook, Twitter

There will be handouts to take away so you won’t have to remember everything!

If you've been meaning to start a blog for a long time, why put it off any longer? Come along to a friendly, fun and informative workshop!

WHERE? WHEN? HOW MUCH?

Saturday 27th October

10am - 2.00pm (including 30min break)

@ 77 Tower Bridge Road, SE1 4TW * (above 'Lost & Found')

Fee: £40.00

Limited Places.

* Some of you may recognise the venue which inspired 'Shop Girl Diaries' - yes, there will be lots of sparkling chandeliers above your head!

ABOUT ME

I began my blog in June 2008. Since then it has been turned into a book and a short film. It won the Completely Novel Author Blog Awards (published writer category) in 2010 and it has just been featured in the new guidebook ‘Blogging for Creatives.’

Monday, 24 September 2012

"It was a time of brutal tyranny and occupation. Young men and women took to the streets to protest. Dictators put them down with iron force. Rumours spread from mouth to mouth. Rebels attacked the greatest empire the world has ever known.The Empire gathered its forces to make those rebels pay.

And in the Midst of all of that. One inconsequential preacher died. And either something miraculous happened, or someone lied."

*

At the launch of THE LIARS GOSPEL, Naomi Alderman was introduced to us all by Penguin editor, Mary Mount, as 'one of the most important writers of her generation'. I've been very lucky to have spent time with her at a writers group and seen her work in progress. She is a brilliant writer and a gorgeous person. I am thrilled to have her on my blog.

We all cheered when you told us that so far you’ve hadno death threats. Is this
a genuine concern?

I
have already had anti-Semitic emails about the novel, so... maybe?I'm a bit worried about what will
happen when the novel is publishedin the US. But we'll see!

Are
you apprehensive of people feeling angry?

Yeah.
I don't actually want to upset people, but when I gave it to aChristian friend she burst into tears
at a section where she said "butJesus just wouldn't have done that!" I had to
point out to her thatI'd taken it directly from the New Testament.

How
do you deal with criticism?

I
have therapy ;-). I mean, constructive criticism is fine of course.

But
now the book's done the best thing is to try to ignore thecriticism and just move on with the new
one.

I
was brought up a Catholic and when I read your book, I was aware ofmyself feeling defensive and thinking,
‘Wait, Jesus didn’t say that!’I was quite surprised because I’m a very cynicalCatholic! Is this your book’s fundamental aim?
To challenge the people who have accepted the story of Jesus without question?

I
suppose a bit! There are a few things. Firstly, there are things inthe Christian story that are either
*really weird* or clearlyanti-Semitic, like, for example, the Jews at the
crucifixion shouting"let his blood be on us and our
children!" and this idea that thepeople would never have asked for Barrabas if the
evil priests hadn'tstirred them up. I've been thinking about those
things for a long timeand how silly it is to imagine that there mightn't
have been perfectlygood reasons for most of the people not to have
liked Jesus. So therewas that "can we just stop saying nasty things
about Pharisees andreally interrogate this story?" feeling.

Also,
I got interested while researching the novel in the world that'susually just the backdrop to Jesus'
story. It's a really fascinatingpolitical and military landscape which gets lost because
of thisoverwhelming
story. So I wanted to put that in its right place again -and I feel now that the story of Jesus
really only makes sense if youunderstand the politics of the time.

I
was struck particularly by the description of the protestsagainst Rome that were happening at the
time of Jesus, and the greater historical context which is generally ignored! Was
it asubject
that was discussed at home? Is it true you had theidea to write this book when you were a
teenager?

Yes,
it's funny how little we tend to look at that period, since itwas the explosive meeting between
Jewish and Roman culture that reallycreated the modern world. So many of the tensions
in Christianity comefrom turning a Jewish cult into the state religion
of Rome (e.g. how did'the prince of peace' end up inspiring *so many*
crusades?).

My
dad's a historian and my mum's also very keen on history so Isuppose this sort of conversation
happened at home quite a bit – notnecessarily Jesus, but the general principle of
tracing the reasonsfor the present in the events of the past.

I
did get the idea for this novel when I was a teenager! It was when Iwas studying Hebrew and Latin at the
same time - I remember saying tomy Hebrew teacher that someone ought to write a
novel about the JewishJesus, and she said "no no, that would be
terrible for the Jews!"Because she thought it would cause anti-Semitism.

However,
I've done it anyway ;-). Let's see...

What’s
your writing routine like?

I
have a word count I have to reach every day: usually 800 words whenI'm working on a new book. And I never
sit down to write saying "Imust write 800 words", only ever "I'll do
100 words and then I'll havea break". I'm very creative in the evenings,
but I do try to get mywords done earlier in the day so they don't hang
over me.

What
are you greatest distractions?

TV.
Instant messenger. But the truth is, if I know where the book isgoing then I usually can't wait to get
to it. If I'm distractingmyself, it probably means there's a problem with
the novel I haven'tresolved.

Margaret
Atwood is now your mentor! I’m very jealous! What is she like?

It's
a really wonderful thing - she is so funny and so intimidatinglyclever, I'm incredibly inspired by her
sharp honesty and wide-rangingmind.

What
advice do you have for aspiring authors?

Keep
writing :-). Do it because you love it. If you don't love itenough to do it for its own sake, you
probably won't get far anyway.

Thursday, 6 September 2012

I have a love-hate relationship with short stories. How can they be so short and yet
so difficult to write?

Sometimes it feels like trying to
squeeze a horse into a jam jar.

I’ve started stories and left
them brewing for years before finishing them off.

Other times I fall so deeply into
my fictional world that if you were to interrupt me I’d stare at you blankly
and wonder where I was.

My favourite stories were written
in short bursts when I’ve been gripped by a sense of urgency to get the words
down. I feel like if I don’t write the whole thing in one go I’ll
never be able to finish it.

After all this time writing
short stories it made sense to publish a collection and here is it:

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

In an earlier blog I suggested the end of the world
would be caused by endless rain. But as you know, as soon as I posted that blog
post, it stopped raining. Fortunately I have a new theory.

What will actually finish us off will be the
complete collapse of our attention spans.

Are you still with me?

Ha. You were about to click on something shiny
weren’t you?

If you’re on twitter then you have already been
infected by the disease. If you used to write 300 hundred page novels but now barely manage 100 word pieces of flash fiction, then you’re also in grave danger.

I myself will be one of the first to
fall.

Today I looked at my computer screen and found
that I was simultaneously buying a book, editing a short story, tweeting about spelling
mistakes, educating myself on internet marketing and of course, signing a
petition to save the arctic.

Multi-tasking it was not. I was doing many things and doing them all badly.

I failed to buy the book because I got distracted
mid-payment, my short story was left unfinished, my tweets were illiterate, my self-education
ended before I picked up one tip and I didn't manage to save the arctic because
what with so much internet activity my computer crashed.

A month ago my attention span was already down to fifteen
minutes.

Now it’s down to twelve and falling.

Admittedly, doing a bad job is not life
threatening in itself. Unsatisfying, yes, but not enough to bring about the end
of the world. The problem will come when our attention spans become so short we can’t concentrate long enough to eat a tic-tac.

There will be many markers along the way towards
total disintegration.

For instance, I’m writing this in the early hours when I should be asleep.

Could I be awake because my shrinking mind can’t
cope with the idea of doing the same thing for seven hours straight?

It’s a theory, take it or leave. I’m bound to have
another one next week.